This Inexpensive Dinner Puts Cheese Center Stage
This is Dinner and Change, a column about recipes that feed four people for about $10—or less.
As a way to celebrate peak-season produce, no-cook caprese salad is a summertime favorite. The classic trio of juicy tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and basil isn’t something that requires a recipe so much as a formula, and there are enough riffs on the original to last you well into September.
But caprese is really a tomato’s show, with the other ingredients playing supporting roles to help your ripe heirlooms shine. It’s a vegetable-forward dish.
Which is why the salad I'm bringing you today is not a caprese; it inverts the caprese's proportions. There are summer farmstand flavors in the form of sweet peppers and basil, but this lentil salad—while retaining some undeniable caprese vibes—has a different focal point. To be clear, it is all about the cheese.
At the farmers market in my college town—which was only open for the last few weeks of classes every year and therefore a total scene—the bread cheese stand was The Place To Be. You could smell it from down the block, for one thing: the unmistakable, slightly pizza-esque aroma of cheese cooking on a hot grill that lured in undergrads by the dozens. Bread cheese, called leipäjuusto or juustoleipä in Finland where it originates, is a squeaky white cheese that turns brown and crispy on the outside and melty on the inside when heated over an open flame, in a pan, or in your oven. My roommates and I would make each slab we bought last as long as possible, cutting small cubes and microwaving them one by one into toasty, salty, gooey perfection.
Now I understand the merits of eating more than just cheese for dinner, but I’m still interested in meals where cheese is the obvious star. Here black beluga lentils are the base; they hold their shape when cooked and readily soak up a sherry vinaigrette. Mixed in are peppers sautéed until sweet and tender and a handful of fresh basil, definitely responsible for some of the caprese feelings. But throughout it all, in extra-large chunks, not even pretending to be a garnish or a mix-in, is a bunch of crisped-up cheese. The hero. The champion. You’ll fight over every piece.
I use bread cheese because it fills me with memories of living with three of my best friends and having zero obligations, but any grilling cheese will do, like Halloumi or paneer. As long as it can take the heat of a pan and crust up on the outside, it’s the right cheese for the job. It’s also the most expensive part of this recipe, coming in at just under four dollars for eight ounces, per Epi’s calculations. Most everything else is a pantry staple, from the honey to the dried oregano, for which you’ll find plenty of other uses (scroll down for some ideas). At about $10 for four servings, it’s an inexpensive, quick, and hearty summer dinner built around an ingredient that never goes out of season.
Grilling Cheese With Sweet Peppers and Black Lentils
The Breakdown
Olive oil: $1.69, Lentils: $1.15, Mini Sweet Peppers: $2.50, Grilling Cheese: $3.99, Dried Oregano: $0.03, Sherry Vinegar: $0.09, Honey: $0.13, Basil: $0.38, Black Pepper: $0.01, Salt: $.01. Total: $9.98 ($2.49 per serving). For more on how Epicurious prices out recipes, click here.
Use It Up
You'll have a lot of lentils left in the bag after making this meal, so check out this roundup for 49 ideas for how to use them—or you can use your leftover sherry vinegar and honey to make these marinated lentils, which in turn can be incorporated into bolognese or an easy braised celery dish. Sprinkle the remaining fresh basil leaves over a bowl or two of pasta, like this one with smoked salmon, this one with summer squash, or this one with romesco sauce. If you feel like making a super-versatile spice blend, use the rest of the dried oregano in a batch of za’atar, which is great on everything from fish and chips to sweet potato dip.
Originally Appeared on Epicurious
